The Maloof family — the owners of the Sacramento Kings still — were in the room with the Seattle group trying to buy the team when they made their pitch to a committee of owners last week. How much that really helped the Seattle group is up for debate — the one thing everybody on both sides of this debate agree on is they are sick of the Maloofs.

Next Thursday and Friday in New York the NBA owners (officially as a group called the Board of Governors) will meet in New York and among the topics to be discussed is whether to approve a sale of the Kings to a group led by Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer — wealthy guys with a plan to move the team to Seattle starting next season and build a new arena.

Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson put together a counter offer with billionaire money (Vivek Ranadive, Mark Mastrov, and Paul Jacobs) and a stadium plan of its own to get built near downtown Sacramento. It’s the kind of offer the NBA and other professional sports leagues want to see from cities with teams — a lot of public money and community support rallied around the franchise.

Anybody who tells you they know for sure what the owners will do next week is a fool — nobody is certain on this. But read the tea leaves and it seems Sacramento may have the eight votes they need to block the sale to the Seattle group.

And if that happens, as we have said before would likely happen, the Maloofs will sell to the Sacramento group.

They want their money and they want to pursue another professional sports franchise in Major League Baseball or the NHL, hence their 5 p.m. deadline today for the Sacramento-based investors to submit a written matching offer for the Kings….

On Thursday, sources close to the Maloofs said that if the Sacramento group submits a matching offer that satisfies the league’s other owners, they will embrace an outcome that keeps the Kings in Sacramento.

To be up front, PBT never reported on the Friday deadline before now because it’s meaningless. It’s just the Maloofs trying to assert some control over a situation where they have no control. If Seattle is rejected the Maloofs only options are to sell to the Sacramento group or hold on to the team. So they will deal with Sacramento. And a deal will get done. The deadline is moot.

But let’s get to the key point — the Maloofs don’t want to hold on to a team because the guys too poor to field a quality NBA team want into the NHL business? Or the MLB business?

The Maloofs have met with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and have for months looked into buying a hockey franchise, with Las Vegas among the possible destinations. Their interests also have expanded and included opportunities in Major League Baseball.

I know how popular Bettman is among hockey fans, what they think of his intelligence, but even then he is too smart to get into bed with the Maloofs. Right? Same with Bud Selig. Right?

The NBA owners do not have an easy choice next week — these are two good offers before them. Seattle is a bigger, wealthier market and its owners define the words “deep pockets.” But for a league that will go to more than a dozen cities in the next 12 years and say “you need to help us out with arena upgrades/a new arena” to walk away from a city that did everything a league could ask sets a bad precedent. The owners will ultimately vote what they think is best for their own pocketbooks long term. But nobody knows for sure what that choice will be.

One way or another, a week from now we should know the fate of the Kings. And then maybe this franchise and its fans can move on to the next step.

Kings fans — a city of people that has rallied around their team in an effort to keep them in town — David Stern has some advice for you:

Just keep supporting the team like you have and then blindly hope for the best.

Not exactly reassuring, is it

When asked about the Sacramento situation during a Thursday press conference, the NBA Commissioner (for another 15 months) said that in the long run a new arena needs to be built. And while the current owners — the Maloof family — have stood in the way of those arena plans you should still support your team.

“Well, I think that there are many people who appreciate the fact that Sacramento was, is, and can be a first class NBA city,” Stern said. “It is true that it needs a new building. We have our differences of opinions with all of our owners, and in this case with the Maloofs on some of the issues that have gone down here. But my advice to Sacramento is to continue the enormous support that you have shown for the team, and we’ll see what the next steps turn out to be.”

It’s amazing and impressive the way Sacramento fans continue to rally around this team in spite of the owners. A lot of fan bases would have walked away by now, and at some point even these fans are going to grow tired of being kicked around.

And Stern’s words? Not that encouraging. It continues to sound like the NBA has thrown up its hands in frustration with them.

It is not really a dramatic bit of news, but this does give you a sense of the NBA’s attitude.

At David Stern’s press conference is Milan Sunday, a foreign reporter asked the final question of the day, about a return of the NBA to Seattle. Here was Stern’s response:

“The answer is there seem to be plans moving along for a new arena in Seattle. There was general agreement in the past that Seattle needed a new arena. It would be my hope that within the timeframe that you mentioned five years that if everything works out perfectly, there would be a new arena and a new team in Seattle. That’s always, for the NBA board of governors, but I know that many governors are favorably inclined.”

Plans for a new arena have been approved and are continuing to move forward, but the next major step is for developer Chris Hansen and partners to get a team that he can anchor the building.

If you want to parse Stern’s words, he says “if everything works out perfectly” and “new team” as if to imply an expansion team. Expansion was something Stern seemed to rule out in the past, but in those cases it was a discussion of putting a team in a smaller market. Seattle is not a small market, and it has the kind of wealthy businesses that can snap up expensive luxury boxes.

I’m not sold that’s it. I think Stern still may be thinking about relocation of another franchise. I know, you’re all thinking Sacramento. But right now the Maloofs are not willing to give up their toy. And I’m done trying to guess how that cluster… mess is going to play out.

I think the big thing to note here is that however Hansen and his guys get a team there would be little if any resistance from the NBA to getting the team up and running in Seattle quickly.

I keep waiting for it. You keep waiting for it. Pretty much the entire city of Sacramento keeps waiting for it.

While the owners the Maloof brothers keep saying they do not plan to move the Kings out of Sacramento, nobody believes them. They need a new arena but the family has killed not only the plans they shook hands on to get one in Sacramento, they also killed any good will that might get them an arena in the future. They are acting like owners looking to move the team.

But David Stern said there is no support for that right now among the other owners.

“If there was a vote now, there would be no support for a move,” Stern said as part of his annual pre-finals meeting with the media. “And I believe the ownership says they’re planning to stay there. On other situations, I might hazard a guess or a prognostication. On this one, I’m out of the business. For now.”

Nothing has changed in Sacramento — the best hope for that team staying in the city is a new ownership group. If they try to move the team (to Anaheim, to Seattle, to wherever) it would involve a new investor if not outright majority owner.

This drama is far from over. Consider this a sabbatical. Everyone is out of the business. For now.

David Stern’s press conference Friday afternoon sounded a whole lot like a eulogy for the Kings in Sacramento.

Stern said Friday afternoon following the two-day NBA Board of Governor’s meeting that a handshake deal reached All-Star Weekend to get a new arena built in Sacramento was basically dead. While he would not use that exact word Stern sounded like a guy resigned to seeing a team move. Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson and the Maloof family that owns the Kings are reportedly meeting Friday but that is a Hail Mary at this point – George Maloof said there is no deal and Johnson said the city was done negotiating.

“We had an agreement in principle, a framework, a deal. Call whatever you want,” Stern said at the press conference broadcast on NBATV. “In my view, it was subject to any party who said didn’t want to do it. It was always non-binding… I think it’s fair for Maloofs to say ‘I don’t want to do it.’

“If they did it a little earlier, a little simpler and a little more directly, it could have saved some angst.”

Stern’s body language and tone suggested he felt bad for Mayor Johnson and the fans of Sacramento, who had stepped up. Stern said several times that the city had done all that could be asked of it.

“I am extremely disappointed, on behalf of Maloofs and city of Sacramento, but I think that there’s nothing further to be done,” Stern said. “This is a situation that the Maloofs will make judgments on and city will have to make judgments on. I think we’ve done as much as we can do.”

While the team has not yet filed for relocation — to Anaheim most likely, although there are other options — it would be surprising if that does not come soon. The Maloof family has said they wanted to stay in Sacramento but their actions said otherwise.

The NBA treats its owners like feudal Lords who can pretty much do what they want in their fiefdoms. David Stern works for and at the pleasure of the other owners. While he took a couple shots at the Maloofs press conference, Stern said repeatedly the Maloofs were within their rights to make the moves they did. As owners paying into an arena project, they had the right to raise concerns and back out.

The other owners, who might want to use that same “we might leave town” leverage down the line on their cities, are not about to tie the hands of the Maloofs.